May/June2013 Issue
May/June Issue
Writer's Digest Magazine
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Literary Fiction Writing
If your passion is for literary fiction, you’ll find guidelines for mastering plot, character, setting, dialogue and more right here. You’ll also get insights into selling your work and getting it published.
Fiction: Point of View
How many times have you heard this around the workshop table: “Why don’t you consider a new point of view?” (Actually, the term used more often is “POV” because it sounds a lot cooler, I suspect.) Everyone then agrees that a new POV might help matters, including the writer, who knew something was wrong and is now relieved to have a likely suspect.
by Steve Almond Read more
Principles of Building a Story
Read "Principles of Building of a Story" from From First Draft to Finished Novel. Read more
From First Draft to Finish Novel
A Writer’s Guide to Cohesive Story Building Read more
Defining and Developing Your Anti-Hero
Anti-heros are the bastards of fiction—those bad guys readers love to hate and hate to love. Find out whats makes a memorable anti-hero tick in this excerpt from Bullies, Bastards & Bitches by Jessica Page Morrell. Read more
The WD Interview: Sara Gruen
It’s hard to say which came first for author Sara Gruen—the animals or the writing, both of which have been in her life for as long as she can remember. While she spends much of the time in her North Carolina home with a menagerie of real animals (not to mention her husband and three children), it’s her fictional ones that have inspired her writing career. Read more
The Four Commandments of Writing Good Sentences
If you want to write a good sentence, don’t pay any attention to your grammar. I don’t mean “a sentence this like OK is.” I mean don’t automatically think you’ve written a good sentence just because it’s grammatically correct. Lots of bad sentences are grammatically correct. Some of these bad sentences might even be yours.
by Bonnie Trenga Read more
Challenging the Limits of Memory
In this excerpt from Writing Life Stories, Bill Roorbach teaches you how to pay attention to and translate your memories and how to overcome your resistance to remembered places and events. Read more
Publish Your First Book After 50
Who says publishing is a young person’s game? Here are an agent’s tips for writing and publishing well into your golden years.
By Scott Hoffman
Read more
Jack Kerouac’s Letters
Jack Kerouac created a modern American folk hero in the Beat generation classic, On the Road (Bantam), out of his vagabond adventures with friend Neal Cassady. A new book sheds light on Kerouac and his life during the writing of a novel that changed a generation. Read more
Singularly Modern
Even as a member of a distinctive literary club, Virginia Woolf broke new ground all by herself. Read more
Vonnegut on Fiction
Slaughterhouse Five author Kurt Vonnegut reflects on his writing style, the craft and the evolution of fiction. Read more
The Comedy of War
Kurt Vonnegut uses a potent mix of dark humor and clear-eyed compassion to expose the realities of war. Read more
Find Identity with Joyce Carol Oates
Novelist and short story writer Joyce Carol Oates has won the National Book Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Achievement in the Short Story, and various other awards.
Known best for her short stories, many of which have been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize and The Best American Short Stories of the 20th Century, Oates still manages to bridge the natural gap that exists between novel and short story writing.
But there is one thing that some may not k Read more
Dave Eggers Helps Sudanese Village With Novel
Telling the tale of a Sudanese refugee’s life in novel form gave literary darling Dave Eggers the challenge of a lifetime. Read more
Try, Try, Try Again 2
All of us experience failure and rejection. But often, those are the two things that push us to succeed. Read more
Go Your Own Way
Dave Eggers’ eclectic body of work serves as a testament to the value-and power-of staying true to your own voice. Read more
On the Edge: Fantastic Fiction
Despite the longevity of the fantastic in narrative form,
there’s long been a stigma against blending it with literary fiction. But recently, readers have been eager to read contemporary
fantastic literature—and publishers are taking note. Read more
Sunny Side Up
Read how Fannie Flagg, the gifted storyteller of the novels Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café and A Redbird Christmas, stays relentlessly optimistic about writing feel-good fiction. Read more
The WD Interview: Anna Quindlen: Balancing Act
As a full-time novelist and part-time columnist, Anna Quindlen’s writing career is a study in symmetry. Read more
5 Tips To Polish Your Fiction
5 Tips To Polish Your Fiction Read more
The 10 Commandments of Fiction Writing
Guide your writing ways with these 10 rules thou must not break.
by Raymond Obstfeld
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Found in Translation
Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and other successful authors talk about the art of working with translators to make their prose sing in any language. Read more
The Silent Type
Can a writer who just wants to be left alone to write make it in today’s extroverted publishing world? Enter 24-year-old James Boice, who may just be the answer to that question. Read more
